Erendiz Atasü

Early life

Born in Ankara in 1947, as the only child of mathematician Faik Sayron and English literature instructor Hadiye Sayron, she was educated in Ankara College and the Faculty of Pharmacy, Ankara University, where she continued as a doctorate student (ph.D in 1974) and subsequently became a professor of pharmacognosy (1988), and taught until her early retirement in 1997. Since then she has been a freelance writer. The year she spent at London University in the early 1970s as a British Council scholar was crucial in the process of her transformation into a literary figure. She later declared that during that year she thought a lot about the complexities of the positions of women in Western and Middle Eastern societies respectively.

Literary career

Erendiz Atasü started writing in 1972 in London, but was in no hurry of publishing. Her first short story collection Kadınlar da Vardır (Women also Exist) appeared in 1983 after receiving the "Akademi Kitabevi" award. Four more short story collections were published up to 1995, when her first and acclaimed novel Dağın Öteki Yüzü (The Other Side of the Mountain)—outwardly a family history—in which she discusses the endeavour and the attainments of the Republican revolution, as well as its shortcomings from the standpoints of women, appeared. A modernist in her themes and messages, she likes to experiment with literary genres, bordering on postmodernist styles. Up to now she has published six novels, eight collections of short stories, and seven collections of essays. Especially in her essays she is an advocate of women's rights and secular society. She also publishes essays of literary criticism. She has won various prestigious awards of Turkish literary circles.

Works

Translated works

Various short stories of Erendiz Atasü have been included in the below anthologies:

Interpretations

Atasü first drew attention with her bold interpretations of women's lives and circumstances set in realistic surroundings, but expressed in poetic styles. She was a new voice among her contemporaries. Her novels are considered to witness the social changes Turkey underwent throughout the scope of twentieth century from an individualistic and feministic view. Her work has been acclaimed both as narrations of history, and as analysis of female sexuality.

Critic Yıldız Ecevit claims that Erendiz Atasü constructs her novels on dichotomies; and declares The Other Side of the Mountain to be an esthetization of Kemalism; whereas Çimen Günay points out that it is a feminist interpretation of the foundation of the Turkish republic. Tom Holland, writing on the English translation, finds the novel "profoundly Turkish and yet also so creatively aware of European literary models" and claims that "it shows Turkey's soul". Tharaud, on the other hand, takes rather a critical view of the said work, whereas others emphasise its historical themes, and Doltaş, and Batum-Menteşe review it as a narration of history.

Critic Ayşegül Yüksel agrees in a way with the concept of dichotomies, but she is more precise and claims that Erendiz Atasü creates literature from the tension between contradictions; and that in her work an impartial scientific observation merges with a strong vein of emotion and empathy; and that the writer feels free in resorting to whatever literary tools she finds becoming her themes.

Mine Özyurt interperates Atasü's work as female novels of awakening based on the discovery of the hidden self, opposing the male bildungsroman where the protagonist merely acquires life experience.

Dilek Direnç elaborates the idea of bildungsroman in Atasü's case, approaching her novels as examples of künstleroman; and drawing attention to such themes in Atasü's work as artistic creativity, and to her protagonists who experience self-discovery parallel to the act of writing. Critics observe that her work has taken a turn towards dystopia in which she merges realism with fantasy to represent the chaotic situation of Turkey which has fallen under the influence of Islamic radicalism.

Papatya Alkan GENCE gives a concise biography of the author and a report of how her works have been received in Dictionary of Literary Biography (vol. 373), Turkish novelists since 1960.

Ideas on women's literature

Atasü describes writing as her means of feeling alive and struggling as well as her sanctuary. According to her, humanity needs to hear life experiences of women, who have been the silenced half of humanity throughout ages, told by women's authentic words. She emphasises that the strong point of women's literature is not relating women's agonies, but taking a critical view of the influences of patriarchy on society and on the individual, especially when it functions in non-overt ways.